China's chief official newspaper, the People's Daily, is gloating over the discomfort Washington finds itself in after Philippine President Rodolfo Duterte visited China and publicly said that he was leaving the United States, followed two weeks later by Malaysia's prime minister, Najib Razak, who also tightened relations with China, including signing security agreements.

China's leader, Xi Jinping, has been given an important new title that has been unused for the last 14 years. And with that comes an elevation of his status to a level clearly higher than that occupied by his predecessor Hu Jintao.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's four-day visit to China was packed with drama, including his hyperbolic assertion that he was separating from the United States and that, from now on, "there are three of us against the world -- China, Philippines and Russia."

Last Tuesday, the British Government issued its long-awaited six-monthly report on Hong Kong -- something it has done regularly since the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, and which the UK government promised parliament that it would do for 50 years.

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen refused to bow to Beijing's pressure when she delivered her first National Day speech Monday, Oct. 10, but she called on China to value the positive results of cross-strait exchanges over the past 20 years and called for talks as soon as possible.

Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama was in Hangzhou for a G-20 meeting and, while there, held what is likely to be his last substantive bilateral talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two men may meet again at the Nov. 19-20 APEC leaders' meeting in Lima, Peru but, by then, there will be a new American president waiting in the wings.

This has been a good month for China in its efforts to seize fugitives on the run, some of whom allegedly fled the country with large amounts of illicit funds. Beijing is now taking concrete steps to obtain the recovery of assets as well.

After a clean sweep of the Olympics table tennis stakes in Rio -- winning all four gold medals in the men's and women's singles and the men's and women's team events in table tennis -- China is moving forward to clinch gold medals in the Paralympics for table tennis as well, winning two team victories on Friday.